


Threat Assessment

by EnglishLanguage



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, BAMF Tron, Clu is a creep, Foreshadowing, Gen, Kevin is an oblivious jerk, Messing with a program's code is a rape parallel, Moral Dilemmas, Racism, Sea of Simulation, Tron has PTSD, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Worldbuilding, it's kinda iffy tho, or mentions of program biology, sorry for the wacky writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-03-14 18:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18953350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishLanguage/pseuds/EnglishLanguage
Summary: “You are, after all, a system monitor,” Clu needles. “The Champion of the Grid. And it would be unlike you to be caught off guard. It would be unlike you not to notice a threat.”





	Threat Assessment

**Author's Note:**

> This one rambles on a bit. You know the drill with this kind of mess, folks: chronological order does not apply.

Clu burns. All programs do, as Tron perceives them.

The old ENCOM system was built with rudimentary code, compared to the Grid. (“Man,” Flynn muses, and a scaffold of real mockery stands rigid beneath his comedic facade, “Forget 70s and 80s tech. ENCOM’s system back then was a wreck, now wasn’t it?”)

 _The old ENCOM system was built with rudimentrary code,_  simple instructions organized into three dimensions. But the system was healthy and functional, interacting and _re_ acting as all code should, living in constant motion. Under the weight of footfalls, the system dipped and rolled; even the smoothest flow of circuits dragged against the edges of the system’s code, catching attention as a neon light catches one’s eyes.

The code itself was not advanced, but the programs of ENCOM learned to glean information not from the vague coding itself, but from the bucking friction and energy of its movement.

 

The Grid is complex.

1s and 0s tangle into thick tendrils. Knots and wires. Over five full cycles elapsed before Tron learned how to avoid tripping on them, before he could scan the new system (shaking the strands of it, shaking _loose_ the detritus woven inside) without choking on the dust.

He knows what it is to search for the energy of the system and to lose oneself in the dark-and-blind, dense mechanics of excessive code. He remembers how his hands would itch and ache (circuits cold and numb as static) where the steel fibers of his reality--commands, _redundant_ commands, strange loopholes--seemed to wind around his fingers, severing the free flow of energy in his body.

Kevin Flynn did not create the Grid to accommodate old programs like Tron, who connect deeply to the energy of a system. The programs generated by and for the Grid rely almost entirely on reading its surface code to survive. There exists, regardless, the vitality of flowing energy in their circuits.

Resultantly, programs burn.

Like brilliant, isolated islands of fire, programs _burn,_ and only Tron knows how to peer into the energy of Grid and notice it.

 

“Tron.” (Clu, specifically, burns too fast.) “Tron, do you know what happens next?”

 

* * *

 

“You pick up on things I don’t, right?”

Tron’s disk is heavy on his shoulders. He shifts his stance; his shoulder blades knock against the edges of the weapon. “Flynn,” he manages, barely biting back the hollow nervousness hissing up his throat, “I’m a security program. My directive is to ‘pick up on things’-”

With a gesture of his hand, Flynn slashes the air to ragged pieces. A User calls for silence, and Tron complies.

His disk isn’t lit, no, but he almost feels it cutting into his skin.

“Forget ‘security,' Tron. You're a  _program._ ” Flynn shoves a hand into his hair, ruffling it up where his helmet tends to flatten it down. “Programs connect with the system in a way Users can’t. You all are endlessly communicating with each other non-verbally, scanning things... You rely on a sixth sense that a real person couldn’t even begin to comprehend!”

 

(“Tron," Clu warns. "Do you know what happens next?”)

(Tron doesn’t like to look back on his conversations with Flynn. He doesn’t like to read too deeply into the casual cruelty of Flynn’s words. The programming of a monitor inside him insists that he analyze it all, regardless.)

 

Flynn’s extravagance, when scanned, feels like masking code: thin, false, shiny. It distracts Tron, confusing him, because Kevin Flynn is made up of an excess of light wrapped around an eternal _nothing._

In the code of the system, Flynn does not exist.

“Your assessment is… correct, Flynn."

“How does it all work?”

Work, Tron thinks, is an inaccurate method of describing a program’s ties to the code and energy of a system. A _process_ works; a _mechanism_ works. The act of reading code and energy, however, requires neither a process nor a mechanism--it's instinct. Tron merely has to reach out. 

“How would you explain vision to the blind, Flynn?” he queries. “Or physical touch to the abstract? This system, and everything, every program in it, are compiled from the same code. I remain… constantly connected to it, to everything. I cannot _visually_ see this sector's I/O tower from our current position, but I can read its exact dimensions and report them to you."

Flynn's eyes widen.

"Energy," Tron continues, "is the- the motion of code in the system. It's the sensation of interaction. Everything around us and inside us is constantly revolving, colliding, redistributing, rezzing and derezzing." Tron closes his eyes. In arcs and bounds of invisible electricity, the energy of the ENCOM system ignites Tron, coursing through his circuits in an eternal loop of light and clarity. Pools of it gather in his fingertips, hot, almost itching--he twitches his hands, and the energy either scatters into the system or redirects back into the circuitry on his arms.

Rapid pulses of heat spark from Flynn's center, shiver through Tron's circuits and color him with what it is to be Kevin Flynn. “The energy you give off, Flynn, is... interested. Excited. I can sense what you feel," he rephrases. "The code of the system conveys no information about thoughts or emotions, but the energy does."  

If lightning were formed into droplets like rain--if the sky reverberated with tremors from the downward trickle of electricity, if raindrops created echoes like ringing metal on the ground-- _that_ is how energy would look, sound, and feel. Tron's circuits flare, and he puts a reluctant check on his own energy consumption, opening his eyes again.

Now, wistfulness creases Flynn’s forehead and wrinkles the system immediately around the User. Tron wonders if Flynn feels as empty as he appears to Tron.

“Detecting code is almost like seeing and feeling,” Tron finally concludes. “Detecting energy, _hearing_ and feeling.”

“Would this sixth sense of yours be compatible with another system?”

“Affirmative,” Tron responds. Where code exists, energy is generated. As long as Tron has access to both, he’ll be capable of full functionality.

 

* * *

 

“Tron, what is that?” Yori spits, and her energy spikes with jagged spindles of fear.

“A weapon.” He cannot successfully lie to her. Yori’s eyes narrow; a scan, hefty with the weight of her skepticism, rakes through Tron’s code.

“No. What _else_ is it?” Her fingers hover at the edges of the disk, agitating the concentric circuits on the weapon despite that she never touches them.

“The Master Control Program had a disk installed on all his conscripts,” Tron explains, locking down the functions through the length of his spine to keep from flinching away. He can still feel the diluted, scarlet _presence_ of the MCP lurking in the code of the disk, bleeding into his own circuits. “To keep track of them, restrict their functions, and install…” He hesitates, unsure how to describe the intrusion in his programming. “To install more  _aggressive_ subroutines into programs slated for gladiatorial combat.”

“Rape code,” Yori states bluntly. “That’s what’s sitting on your shoulders as we speak.”

“I promise I'm not corrupted.” He sends her the ping without thinking, his circuits racing. / _Shame-somethingwrongwithme-pleaseYori_

“I know,” she whispers, and doesn’t recoil from him. On the contrary, Yori deepens their non-verbal connection until their bond shivers with her sorrow and fear. “But it’s not me you have to convince.” Finally, her hands settle on the edges of Tron’s disk, pressing the softness of skin into his circuits. The new sensation eclipses the crawling strangeness of the disk’s touch.

“Tron, you _know_ that new things--different things--are never well-received by a system.”

 

* * *

 

He stands at the perimeter of the Sea and aches to submerge himself inside. Created for independence, for peregrination, for reconnaissance, Tron seeks to learn and understand. He seeks to experience things.

 

(“Tron, do you know what happens next? You are, after all, a system monitor. The Champion of the Grid.”)

 

He presses a palm against the shore, the material of his glove dimpling where gravel digs into his palm, and scans.

Detecting the code of an object or material has always been an inaccurate estimation of tactile sensation. Merging his code and his circuitry with solid ground, Tron cannot feel the cool fluidity that ripples in pleats across the Sea. He can process only the configuration of junk code being recycled and reformed in the ocean depths--which doesn't scan as wet (or dry), or as an actual liquid.

Tron does not feel the Sea, but rather, what it is to _be_ the Sea. Immaterial, intricate, kinetic, ever-expanding...

 

(“And it would be unlike you to be caught off guard.”)

 

Code and energy, locked together in complete integrity.

He cannot bring himself to step into the Sea.

In an interminable world of interwoven _landskyocean,_ Tron is minuscule, bent and nearly overwhelmed beneath the weight of two systems and numerous cycles’ worth of memory. Heavy, he could all too easily slip beneath the waves and drown.

His scan ripples across the presence of another program. “Jalen.”

The ISO halts with all the swiftness of surprise. Tron identifies the _consternationamenity_ emanating from him in slow waves. “Hello, Tron. You caught me.”

Standing, Tron brushes particles of dust and broken rock from his hands. “What are you doing here?” / _Unexpected-pleasantsurprise_

“The feeling is reciprocated.” Jalen looks past him, out into the Sea of Simulation. “Initially, I intended only to visit the place of my creation, but I sensed your signature. You're… projecting it.” / _Nobetterwordforit-apologies_

Tron catches the beginnings of _concern,_ hastily cut off, at the end of the transmission.

“I wanted to visit you as well. There aren’t many other programs on the Grid who understand my people."

As the protector of the Users and the Grid, Tron is meant to comprehend, to be aware of a colossal everything. He doesn't know whether the animosity between basic programs and ISOs stems from each group refusing to understand the other. He doesn't know whether programs and ISOs are fundamentally incompatible, and from there, if the ISOs are similarly incompatible with the Grid. His failings... frustrate him.

"I am not the only program who understands the ISOs," Tron finally mentions. It would be strategically unwise of Jalen to alienate himself so completely. "There are others who sympathize-"

"That isn't what I'm referring to, and you know it. You were written differently than other programs. The Grid didn't generate you. Kevin Flynn didn't create you."

No. Alan_One was responsible for that. Irritated, Tron pushes aside his awareness of the eroded hollow in his core where his User's absence still aches.

"The ISOs were born from the constant motion, the rearrangement, of the Sea. We remain in harmony with that motion, not the stagnant code of this system." Jalen gestures toward the undulating expanse of the ocean before them. "Somehow, you detect the same things we do."

“I'm an old program," Tron replies dryly. "However, you would do well to remember that other programs, albeit not to the same extent as the ISOs, can sense the energy of the system."

“They don't try to. It's too foreign to them,” Jalen sighs, trying to joke. But there have been too many voxels spilled on the streets of the Grid; instead of amusement, the ISO emits flat distaste. / _Regret-pity-don’tforgetspite_

/ _C_ _heckyourself_ Tron replies, shaking his head. “No sense in worrying over what one program or another is compatible with.”

“And yet,” murmurs Jalen, “Isn’t it a tragedy that they can’t hear the song of the Sea?”

Tron hears no song, but the Sea, persistent, drags against his circuits, clinging to the few lines of light it can reach on his body. Cautious-- _always_ cautious--Tron opens more of his exterior circuitry to the outside world. Pathways of white-blue burn up his arms and chest; for the first time in cycles, Tron feels his code unfold and breathe.

Now, he can sense it: the ‘song’ of the Sea.

“It’s beautiful,” Jalen observes, tilting his head to the side. Through sparse clothing, the ISO’s circuits swell with light and energy. Tron envies him his freedom. Hundreds of his own circuits from the ENCOM system, perfectly crafted to connect to the system’s energy, remain smothered beneath his gridsuit and armor. He can hear the Sea, but never to the extent that the ISOs can…

 _Landandskyandocean_. _Changingrenewedandremade._

“The ISOs are the Sea, Tron. This is the source of our code, and if it belongs here, so do we. No program can deny it.”

“No,” Tron agrees, wrestling to subdue his disquietude before he unintentionally projects it into the Grid. Beside him, Jalen stands with eyes closed, arms outstretched: too vulnerable.

_Foreverandeternalandfree…_

 

(“It would be unlike you not to notice a threat. So tell me, Tron--where is the threat?”)

 

* * *

 

“These new programs... Clu couldn’t communicate with them ‘properly,’” Flynn shrugs. “According to him, they’re primitive.” Disappointment pulls bitter lines into the user’s countenance. “Or stubborn. Either they can’t or _won’t_ use--and I quote--‘non-verbal communication via the code of the system.’”

“They have their circuits bared,” Tron notes. In his peripheral vision, he sees Flynn jolt with a surge of frustration. Even if Flynn doesn’t appear in the code of the Grid, Users still have _power,_ and the energy of his emotion lashes around him like the storms in the Outlands around Argon.

It's telling that, even though the programs of the Grid connect to code only, not energy, they can still sense the massive irregularity of Flynn’s presence.

“Tron, man, that’s... off-topic.”

“I’m going somewhere with this,” Tron reassures. Flynn huffs, and the sound slowly lengthens into a tired groan.

“ _Fi-ine_. Yes, they’re hardly wearing any clothing. It’s strange.”

“Describe the visual characteristics of their circuits.”

“Um.” Flynn joins Tron at the edge of the overlook, leaning against the railing. Below them, the city streets are empty of civilian programs, lined with tanks and system security. A new life form has entered the Grid, and Tron will not take any chances with the safety of either the Sea-born programs or the citizens under his protection. “Broader than the circuits of most programs? More compact, too;  _maybe_ they had more circuits than normal. How come?”

“In the ENCOM system, programs had a more complex network of circuits.”

“Yeah.” Without so much as trying for subtlety, Flynn looks Tron up and down. “No offense, man, but you’ve gone blank.” He chuckles stiffly. “I’d almost forgotten how you used to look like an LED Jackson Pollock painting.”

“...This file cannot be found.”

“You saying you don’t know Pollock, LED, or both?” Flynn questions. “Never mind. Keep going, Tron.”

Tracing a line down his arm, Tron remembers where his major circuits used to run before he covered them. “Programs can scan code or energy to understand the system.”

“I know.”

“Energy runs through circuits; resultantly, the more _exposed_ circuits a program has, the more completely it can connect to the energy of the system itself. But the code in the Grid is extensive enough that the programs created for it can depend on code exclusively to navigate. They don’t require many circuits or a connection to the system’s flow of energy.”

“But you think…” Flynn waves his hand in a vaguely circular gesture, brow furrowing in thought.

“If the new programs can't understand code, it would be logical to assume they communicate differently.” Tron’s need to analyze the Sea-born programs and sate his curiosity is rivaled only by his desire to tell Yori, who would be fascinated by the phenomenon. Her opinion as a simulations program would be invaluable. 

Tron doesn't visit her often--maybe twice every decacycle. Being held captive by the MCP changed Tron and, as a result, the nature of his relationship with Yori, despite that he doesn't like to think about it.

“Not primitive after all, eh?” The hollow of Kevin Flynn sparks with a silver-tinged excitement. “What a miracle.”

“I’m not completely certain, Flynn. I still have to run scans."

“Miracle, Tron,” the User repeats, a hand on his chest. “I knew they would be; I could _feel_ it.”

 

(“Tron, do you know what happens next?”)

 

The original programs of the Grid do not, in the end, trust a species they cannot fully communicate with.

New things, as Tron has always known, are never well-received by a system.

 

* * *

 

(“The system is destabilizing. Programs are rebelling, the ISOs seem a likely catalyst for this mess, and Flynn--the _Creator--_ is absent.” Clu’s digital signature reeks of something sweet and bloated, of fluttering heat and the stagnant plasma that sours the air in the far Outlands. “Tron…”

This argument is nothing new. Tron’s patience fractures. Clenching his jaw, he imagines he can hear the ragged crack of his teeth.

“Tron,” Clu repeats, demanding attention. “Do you know what happens next?” His code feels slick under Tron’s scan, wet and raw like a circuit broken open. A dense, molten inferno collapses into itself within the administrator’s core.

“You are, after all, a system monitor,” Clu needles. “The Champion of the Grid. And it would be unlike you to be caught off guard. It would be unlike you not to notice a threat.”

The opposite of his User, Clu stands heavy on the Grid like a glitch in gravity, amassing endless amounts of energy, burying new rage inside the old. He folds into himself, again and again, straining at the creases. He’s volatile.

And Kevin Flynn?

Where the User walks, Tron detects a gaping void in the Grid. Flynn is a wound, a vacuum, a chasm; code and energy alike warp around him. Flynn is superficial: inside him, there is nothing.)

 

“I have to go back to the real world, Tron. Unlike all you overworked programs, Usershave lives to take care of."

The last sentence, Tron is certain, was intended to be humorous, but Flynn has poor taste in comedy. Tron, meanwhile, tries his hardest (which never works) not to read too far into Flynn’s careless words.

“When will you return?”

“Half a week from now.” Flynn clicks his tongue, running a hand through his hair. These are signs of frustration, Tron notes--Flynn does a very poor job of hiding his patterns of emotional expression. This, if nothing else, he has in common with Clu. “ _If_ everything goes well at work.”

In a little less than a week, according to Tron’s calculations of User time, nearly half of a cycle will pass inside the Grid. Nearly half a cycle of tension, rioting, constant insubordination within the security teams under Tron’s command…

Trepidation fidgets deep inside his core.

 

(“So tell me, Tron--where is the threat?”

“Don’t test me, Clu.” Tron keeps his voice even, smoothing the words up his throat and over his tongue until no indication of emotion or bias can be read in his speech. His connections to channels of code, in addition, remain closed. “You already have your opinions about what threatens the system; nothing I say will change that. It’s your responsibility, as sysadmin, to evaluate the status of the Grid-” for an instant, Tron pauses, staring down his opponent- “ _c_ _orrectly.”_

“Flynn is a liability,” Clu argues, and the words, at this point, are very well-worn.

“He’s negligent, but we don’t rely on him to run the system,” Tron rebukes. “We should be able to rectify this on our own.”

Clu’s circuits flare from yellow to a dirtied orange. “Ever since the ISOs appeared, the Grid has been slowly collapsing. How can you make excuses for Flynn?”

"Kevin Flynn is flawed," Tron admits and rolls his shoulders back, reassuring himself of the presence of his disk. "That doesn’t mean we should give up on him.”)

 

* * *

 

Tron detects when the security program standing beside him loses her grip on her scan. Her digital signature shrinks back into itself in a loosened, overstretched, _overwrought_ coil of code and energy.

She’s exhausted. They’re all exhausted, in truth, after warding off two waves of malware. Some security programs hide it better than others.

Tron drags out his own scans to cover a broader area, noting where the frayed edges of defunct code distort the natural structure of the Outlands. Sharp-edged error messages scrape through his circuitry, creeping past the heavy dampeners on his armor and tangling lines of energy in his body. Suits with minimal circuit exposure are constricting and discomfiting, but there is a reason why the soldiers of the Grid, frequently exposed to corruption such as this, choose to wear them.

By his User, Tron can’t understand how anyone failed to notice the swollen nest of malware growing outside the city; the foreign code it emanates is massive, intrusively painful.

_[Steady. Hold the line.]_

One access control program receives the command and sends it back through the communication channel with a disjointed location query.

Tron amends his orders. _[Location of malware unknown. Shut off all communications. Hold the line.]_

Something foul roils deep in the mass of blemished code, and Tron ignites his disk.

 

The malware programs have no disks or apparent weapons, and they flail more than they fight, but they have the advantage of numbers. As adware, they have the advantage of distraction as well, overloading the battleground with error messages and garbled adverts that smear, filthy, over Tron’s code. The use of his disk is unnecessary--he seizes one by the shoulders and slams it into the ground.

It derezzes on impact, caving like _dust._ But it’s one thing to trample over dust, and another thing entirely to choke under the weight of a mountain of it.

The next program he engages survives for longer, hitting the ground with the compact thud of a solid body instead of the hiss of scattering voxels. Tron slits it open, chin to chest, with a flick of his disk.

Another opponent tackles him from behind, fingers clawing. The force of the collision rolls him forward; Tron plants his hands in the guttering remains of the first attacker and carries the second one with him. They both land on their backs, the malware program winded and deflating and shattering under the edge of Tron’s disk…

Which he throws, crouching low to the splattered ground and making himself into a sturdy base in the bucking chaos. Two more of the invaders derez as his disk cleaves through them. The weapon rebounds off a wall of rock; Tron catches it, spins on the balls of his feet, and strikes a third attacker below the knees.

He rolls forward again, this time shifting up to stand. 

Some program--a member of his team; Tron understands the wavelength of the program’s communication--shrieks out jagged packets of compressed data.

Tron suspects the program is screaming out loud, too, but he can’t hear over the cacophony of disks and crashing bodies.

_[Help me help me help me; what’s happening?]_

Tron shakes the program’s voice from his head, slides over another patch of crumbled voxels and spilled energy, and drives his disk into dense muscle. He recoils and moves again, kicking through voxels up to his shins.

 

Tron can’t hide from being the hero of the Grid. But he is independent security, made to run inside and outside and in circles around any system, so he does his best to dodge the general public. He pulls his digital signature into himself, dims the exposed insignia on his chest, and guides his lightcycle into an alleyway beside the city’s control tower.

On Tron’s left hand, his fingers twitch incessantly. The energy flow through the circuits running to his fingertips is sluggish, inhibited, almost locked up at certain nodes.

_Weak._

He doesn’t feel the strain whenever he has his disk in hand, activated. Energy flows easily, smoothly, from the circuits in his arm to those in the disk, no longer prone to clogging up in his hands and wrists.

Tron crosses his arms over his chest and eases his hand back into mobility by plucking at the circuit on his right elbow. And he ignores how it _vexes_ him to be so reliant on his (the MCP's) disk.

He slips into the empty tower and its darkness. Soundless, lightless, the building has a lack of stimulus that encloses him in an immaterial armor of its own; Tron’s shoulders, for the first time in millicycles, relax, and he tucks forward into a slight slouch. Overriding the programming of the elevator, Tron deactivates the lights inside it--similarly, he allows his own functions to idle.

The door of the elevator does _not_ open to an empty room.

Clu?

“Off fighting Gridbugs, eh?”

_Flynn._

The forced cheer of the question rings more hollow than the User could ever suspect. Empty spaces do not typically generate spontaneous bursts of false happiness, so Tron harbors a mild distaste for Flynn’s tendency to do so anyway. He struggles to predict and analyze Flynn’s outbursts and their impacts on the system.

Kevin Flynn spews creative liberty like an explosion, like unstable code tearing itself apart, and the Grid bears the scars of his efforts (often disguised as strangely extravagant buildings, or as abandoned, bug-infested projects in the Outlands).  

“Well?” Flynn prompts. “Gridbugs?”

Tron instinctually pokes a scan at him; it returns to Tron aching with errors, burning identifications of ‘program not detected: malware’ into his core.

“The real big ones or those little… spidery things?” Flynn barrels on as if Tron had pinged him an affirmative, and as if Flynn could actually detect or respond to pings. “The big ones are a real bummer, I know, but the little bugs?” Flynn shudders theatrically. “Too much like the pests we have back in the real world.”

“‘Real’ world?” Tron inquires, carefully holding back a follow-up comment- [ _I_ _’m too glitched to deal with this, Flynn.]_ \-  in binary. Code-blind, Flynn isn’t able to receive the complaint, and Tron isn’t inclined to fling parts of himself into eroded, nonresponsive space just for the cathartic effect.

Flynn sighs. “User world. Right.” Fiddling with some display, reshaping a set of data into a three-dimensional hologram, he doesn't look at Tron. Near immediately, the observation strikes Tron as invalid; more accurately, Flynn is refusing to look at Tron, though his eyes occasionally flick up from the screen and dart across a strip of air just in front of Tron’s waist.

“I was not fighting Gridbugs,” Tron ventures. As expected, Flynn puffs out his cheeks and frowns, the expression consistent with emotions of discomfort or agitation. “They were programs. Adware.”

Flynn brandishes both his every opinion and his every, strained attempt to _disguise_ those opinions on his face. The contradiction of it clashes, twisting his visage into the likeness of acute agony.

Or--as Flynn prefers to describe himself--he ‘wears his heart on his sleeve.’

“Adware,” Flynn mutters, dragging the word out into a low drawl. “Is that-” He shakes his head, propping himself against the edge of his desk with stiff, locked arms. “Are _they_ something I should be worried about?”

“No. I took care of them.”

“Oh. Killer _,_ man.”

Tron wishes Flynn would look up at him. He itches to understand the situation reluctantly unfolding through Flynn’s aloofness, to seize Flynn by the shoulders and _scan_ the null unit until something about Flynn finally starts making sense. “Are you… displeased?”

Flynn startles to attention, standing up straight and accidentally meeting Tron’s gaze. Limited to pure visual analysis, Tron assesses Flynn’s wellbeing: exhaustion weighs dark beneath the User's eyes and faint red colors his lip where Flynn tends to gnaw at the skin. Kevin Flynn, in short, is healthy, albeit troubled. “You’re very withdrawn. This behavior is inconsistent with your usual attitudes.”

“No, it’s all casual, Tron,” Flynn chuckles, still _lying…_

After weathering Clu’s caustic honesty for cycles, Tron can’t parse how to properly respond. The fact rankles him. He was written to adjust and compensate for new scenarios; without that ability, he’s useless as a monitor. Tron stabs a mental disk into his own port out of sheer frustration.

He has to do better, never mind that his hands flutter from fatigue, circuits running cold and sluggish from the center of his chest to the ends of his extremities. If he can stand here and hide the crooked sway in his step, he can cooperate with the Creator of the Grid.

“Flynn,” he begins, then reconsiders his tactics. “Kevin.”

Automatically, the tense lines around Flynn’s mouth soften.

“Have I failed to fulfill my directives in some way? If so, I can’t recall any recent instance.”

Kevin interrupts with a swipe of his hand. “Stop. Tron, you’re fine. I’m sure you did _great_."Tron can’t fathom why a note of condemnation soaks, dark as a virus, through Kevin’s voice and mannerisms. Turning back toward his work, Flynn adds on a mumbled “Congratulations.”

Maybe it sounds too much like Clu, who grapples with Tron more often than any swarm of Gridbugs. Maybe Tron is on the verge of collapsing into recharge, wounded, and disgruntled by the fact that he came here to _hide_ from conflict. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, irritation dynamizes Tron’s circuits, scorching his code where it had cooled into a state of weary hypothermia.

Tron reaches...

He barely scuffs knuckles against Flynn’s shoulder, and the User jerks backward, stumbling into his chair. His eyes--narrowed, scrunched between furrowed eyebrows and a wrinkled nose--fixate on Tron’s hands.

Pale, blue energy and a murkier, yellow-green viscera coat his arms from fingers to elbows, fully dried, but fresh enough to maintain a faint sheen. He knows blotches of the fluid pattern his disk, as well, in a smaller quantity. A great deal of it burned off on the blistering edge of the weapon.

Tron surveys his hands, flexes them. “This disturbs you,” he realizes.

“They’re people, man!” Flynn growls.

The stiff encrustation bothers Tron, impeding full mobility of his fingers, and it’ll be a pain to defrag his code where combusting energy torched it. But the presence of another program’s remains on his body doesn’t disturb him. Combat doesn’t disturb him.

Finally, he folds his arms behind his back, out of view. “I’m aware.” More aware than any User could be.

The energy field around Flynn contorts, disrupting code. The shockwaves grate against Tron in the same way they always did when the MCP was angry, as they still do when a virus takes hold of a singular point on the Grid with super-concentrated force and twists…

Briefly, Tron’s ventilation stutters to manual. He regains control of his functions without so much as a flinch (and therein lies one difference between himself and Flynn).

“I don’t… what do you mean, ‘I’m aware?’ You-” Flynn jabs a finger at him, forceful, but unwilling to touch. Now that Tron knows to watch for disgust, he identifies evidence of it in every one of Flynn’s actions. “You protect the Grid. What kind of lousy protector kills other programs left and right? Other- _O_ _ther people?_ ”

“I don’t have time for this dialogue, Flynn.”

“You could try imprisoning them.”

“That’s not a sustainable solution.”

The User flounders, grinding his jaw. “Then send them back to wherever they came from. They don’t have a choice, man! Their users send them to attack us; they don’t have a _choice.”_

“Flynn!” Tron doesn’t make a habit of raising his voice. When he does, even Clu blanches.

Flynn lacks Clu’s capacity to weather vicious arguments, so he falls back completely, blindsided. Sighing, Tron buries his guilt under more distracting sensations, namely the pain radiating up from the shattered code in his legs and abdomen.

He wants to tell Flynn that this microcycle isn’t a convenient unit of time for the User to start caring about programs as real beings. He wants to ask how Flynn can advocate for the lives of malware, yet still ignore the mobs storming the cities of the Grids, wreaking havoc and derezzing innocents.

 

(“Tron, do you know what happens next?”)

 

He pushes away the memory of Clu’s voice. “Listen,” Tron bites out. “Programs have the potential to develop beyond their given directives.” The elaborate circuitry feeding his disk port flares in time with a flash of memory. Sometimes, he wonders whether the hostile code implanted in him by the MCP disappeared when Flynn transferred him to the Grid, or if Tron simply _developed_ and consumed it.

“You always talk about it, Flynn--in many ways, programs are like Users. Do you think I’m not sentient, or capable of making my own decisions?”

“No, I don’t think that.” The words barely scrape out of Flynn’s throat, as if he's realizing them as he says them aloud.

“Users make bad decisions; programs make bad decisions. I protect the Grid from malignant programs.” He's supposed to fight for the Users, too; lately, the directive has taken low priority as the desires of one User are pitted against the safety of every program in the system. Tron isn’t certain how Flynn, or how the conflict in Tron’s directives, will factor into the future of the Grid. “I will not waste time tolerating my enemy. Do you understand?”

Wide-eyed, Flynn shrugs, not hearing the challenge implied in Tron's words.

 

(“So tell me, Tron--where is the threat?”)

 

Tron tries to picture Flynn as his enemy, as an obstacle in Tron’s mission to protect the Grid. Users break, just as programs do, and Users can derez.

“Don’t ever tell me that I’ve failed to perform my function _by_ performing my function,” he continues. “I’m security. I do what is necessary.”

“Even if I hate it?” Flynn’s voice wilts into a whisper, unbearably small and damaged. If Flynn’s hollow-centered exuberance disturbs Tron, then he detests Flynn’s silence to an even greater extent. It's nothingness on top of nothingness. “Even if I ask you to try something else?”

Tron’s anger with the User dwindles into a vague, faded sense of disappointment. “For the last time, Flynn, you aren’t the only person on the Grid I have to protect.”

The fire in Flynn's eyes dampens into a dark miasma. After this, Tron decides he’ll be surprised--pleasantly or unpleasantly remains to be seen--if Flynn reappears in the Grid within the next cycle.

 

* * *

 

“How can you make excuses for Flynn?”

“Kevin Flynn is flawed,” Tron declares. “That doesn’t mean we should give up on him.”

“‘Flawed,’” Clu sneers, “Is a euphemism. Flynn isn’t flawed, he’s _imperfect._ ”

And for all the precision that Alan_One put into his code, Tron still finds himself riddled with glitches after any long period of work. “We’re all flawed,” he counters and silently dares Clu to deny it. “Perfection is a process-”

“True.”

“Like any other program, Flynn can grow beyond his flaws, his… given directives.”

Clu snorts softly, already tiring of the fight. “I don’t believe that.” He clasps his hands behind his back (more difficult for him to reach his disk), and Tron releases the eager tension clinging to his muscles. “No one ever develops sufficiently on their own. If I want perfection, I have to make it myself.”

Rigid confidence takes hold of Clu’s posture, straightening him out of his slumped agitation, raising him into magnificence. Cold wariness drips through Tron’s circuits--he can’t detect whether he has control of this situation anymore, but he knows better than to claw harder to keep a hold. Standing one, tacit step away from the looming storm, he assesses Clu.

They’re both calm, now: passive, settled, entangled in a perverted camaraderie uncharacteristic of their interactions for the past several cycles. If nothing else, Tron trusts the admin not to lash out and put a disk through his chest.

“Perfection, one way or another.” Clu nods, looking out at the Grid through the broad window in the room. The energy trapped inside him distorts and writhes, burning fast, eating Clu alive. “I’m going to make it work, Tron. As far as _my_ actions are concerned, that’s what happens next.”


End file.
